MarvinMan:
It's good to see the mod is still around. Even if we don't have enough members to revive the automated arena yet, the mod includes several useful changes, particularly allowing longer arcs to be created.

If anyone's not used the mod before, I'd definitely recommend it, especially if you find yourself eternally sticking the wheels back onto your bots.

On the subject of further work on XFM, how hard would it be to remove the starry background on the lower graphics settings (or make the terrain not transparent)? For some reason the terrain becomes mare transparent the lower the graphics are set. I'd not really had an issue with it before, but I'm currently having to run on the lowest graphics setting to get anything resembling a playable framerate.

PressureLine:
The terrain transparency issue is something certainly worth having a look at, I'll put it on my list of things to do.

I still also want to re-redo hitpoint values and weapon DPS. But what I would really love to do would be to look at the relationship between hovers and jets, as well as taking a look at fins.

Imo hovers should work more like a generic ducted fan, rather than being an antigravity device. Adding in of some sort of 'ground effect' (if the fan is pointed at a solid surface, and the surface is within a certain range, it gets an boost to thrust output) vectored thrust (rather than thrust always opposite to the force of gravity) and possibly making them reversible. Also gravity-based efficiency for hovers, jets and fins. With hovers and fins losing effective thrust as the gravity drops until they provide zero thrust in zero gravity, and jets effectively being the opposite, with poor thrust ability at 'normal' (10) gravity and having the thrust ramp up as the gravity drops.

A guy can dream right?

cupid_the_conqueror:
Honestly pressureline, I think you should talk to Neil About getting him to Fax you an NDA for the rawbots sourcecode. You could do SOO much more with the XFM mod!

PressureLine:

--- Quote from: cupid_the_conqueror on March 11, 2016, 04:57:03 am ---Honestly pressureline, I think you should talk to Neil About getting him to Fax you an NDA for the rawbots sourcecode. You could do SOO much more with the XFM mod!--- End quote ---

Lordy, I haven't seen a fax machine in about 10 years! I'd be fine with signing an NDA, but I prefer email 8)

MarvinMan:
Re-working hovers and jets as air-breathing and rocket engines sounds like a cool idea, but I can see a couple of potential problems:>On maps with planets, most flights end up going orbital or entering interplanetary space, and making the propulsion/control surfaces ineffective at high altitude would make that much harder to rectify.>Jets and hovers have no built-in thrust limit, so most control systems will just brute-force their way out of the thrust reduction mechanic until the thrust reaches zero.>The current hovers make flight much easier for beginners and provide a convenient support for large structures, so it would be a bad idea to remove them completely.>There's too little drag in rawbots as it is, so making fins less effective at high altitudes would increase the frequency at which bots accidentally attain escape velocity.>Similarly, fins not working in space/at high altitudes necessitates additional jets for control, which tend to just make the bot go even faster.